BEEN IN THE STORM SO LONG | Black History Month Address at The Hermitage

Dr. Carter G. Woodson began Negro History Week in 1926. Observed during February in honor of the births of black social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, the observance expanded to the entire month in 1976.

Eighty-nine years later, we gather to affirm that black history matters at The Hermitage–the home of Andrew Jackson, another “great” American president and a plantation slaveholder. Even Dr. Woodson might have been pleasantly surprised by a gathering at a place such as this.

It is my privilege a to join you today for this year’s Black History Month observance for which I will offer a few words of remembrance. I make the distinction that they will be few, because I always try to respect the time allowance of my gracious hosts; and even more importantly, because discussions about the black past should not ever take place without thoughtful and serious consideration of the many ways in which that history affects the present–and with a conscientious awareness of how our present shapes our hopes for the future.

Hailed as a military hero in the Battle of New Orleans, and elected by virtue of his popular appeal as the “people’s leader,” Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, was born without the advantages of the aristocracy. His triumphant presidency may have eclipsed his humble beginnings; but his inextricable ties to slavery reveal a portrait of contradiction–both of a “great” American president, and of the American nation whose character he helped to shape.

While Andrew Jackson was “Born for a Storm,” his rags to riches story is not merely the story of his charm, his charisma, or even of his passion. It is a story that is undergrided by the toiling of enslaved black lives that stretch from the nine slaves Jackson owned when he purchased The Hermitage in 1804, to the approximately 150 slaves he owned at the time of his death in 1845. The strivings of these, enslaved, black, men, women, and children produced not just a sprawling 1,000+ acre self-sustaining plantation; they functioned as a part of a slave-sustained economy, driven by greed, justified by the myth of black racial inferiority, enshrined in the American Constitution, and protected by the supremacy of “King Cotton.”

Born Allan Hope, but better known as Mutabaruka, the Jamaican poet and musician pointedly contends:

And he is right. There was a long and glorious pre-transatlantic slave history of the African continent. The same is not true in the American experience: slavery is American history–it was not an interruption of the best-laid plans. Slavery was the plan.

Designed to strip enslaved a people of every human dignity, the American tradition of slavery as race-based and perpetual was as distinctive, as it was intentional, brutal and dehumanizing. Reducing slaves to mere chattel, the American slave system was conceived out of greed, and expanded by a ruthless, unconscionable, and immoral pursuit of the same. There is no plantation slave owner who is exempt from its stain.

We must be careful to remember, that like so many other American “heroes”–including twelve American presidents–it was slavery, and not enterprise, that was the source of Andrew Jackson’s wealth.

The black lives enslaved on these grounds, the lives of Old Hannah, Charles, the two Aarons, Hannah, Tom, Argyle, Ben, Creasy, Alabama Sally, Mary, Titus, Big Sampson, Pleasant, Polydore, Big Sally, Jim, Indian Hannah, Old Priss, Old Sampson, Peter, Rachel, John Fulton, M. Ellen, Old Ned, Dunwoody, Old Dick, Dady and Mona, and their descendants, as well as the countless others enslaved on grounds like it across the American South, endured lifetimes of suffering.

So while Andrew Jackson was “Born for a Storm” these black lives “Been in de Storm So Long.” Their sufferings are embodied in the spirituals–in songs of the slave experience, in words like:

I been in de storm so long / I been in de storm so long, chillun / I been in de storm so long, / Oh, gimme little time to pray

Slavery, however diverse its application, regional practices, and scope in industries, was never benign; and likewise, there was no such thing as a “good” or “kind” master. Such notions belie notions of American democracy and plain ole’ historical truths. The truth is that the survival of the black family, of black customs and black traditions is a miracle that persisted in spite of slavery and because of black self-determination.

It is the very same black self-determination that sustained American Blacks amid the reversal of every Reconstruction era again.

..that protected them in spite of the state-sanctioned vigilantism of white terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan

…that inspired them in spite of the second-class citizenship prescribed and inscribed on black life by Jim Crow

…that empowered them in spite of the brutal responses of most rank-and-file white Americans to the mid-twentieth century demands of blacks for freedom, justice, equality and civil rights;

and it is the very same self-determination that is leading this current generation of black activists to the streets in city-centers all across this nation in the past few months in affirmation that #BlackLivesMatter.

There’s is a cry that has been heard throughout American history–a cry that cannot be quieted by the impassioned performances of breakout actors or cinematic genius of movie directors such as those of Twelve Years a Slave or even of Selma–it is a fire that cannot be snuffed out by black history month celebrations or even of 50th anniversary “Freedom Rides” and marches on cities like Selma, Alabama.

It is a struggle that has been at the heart of the black American existence since the days of slavery.

It is a war that cannot be truly won until the taking of black lives is not qualified or diminished by wearing hoodies, stealing cigarillos, selling loose cigarettes or being a kid playing with a BB gun.

The taking of even a single human life cannot merely be about the choices of the person who now lays dead, in a casket, in the ground. It must also, if not more so, be about the choices of the person whose experiences, prejudices, and powers took that life.

Until we can remember that importance of history in this way, we can’t truly remember that the enslaved black lives who worked these lands made it possible for Andrew Jackson to be an American president.

Until we can, we cannot truly affirm that black lives matter in the same way that white lives do.

Until we can, the un-freedom of racial inequality and injustice will continue to ring out:

I been in de storm so long / I been in de storm so long, chillun / I been in de storm so long, / Oh, gimme little time to pray